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With Second Step programs implemented schoolwide, Kent Laboratory Academy has built a culture of belonging, one where students feel supported and educators feel empowered.

Atlanta Public Schools, a large and diverse district serving nearly 50,000 students, is showing how a thoughtful, data-informed approach can transform school climate and academic outcomes.

The primary goal of Second Step® Middle School is to equip students with the skills, knowledge, and mindsets that will help them successfully navigate adolescence. During adolescence, individuals experience great changes in their brain, body, and environment. These changes come with challenges as well as opportunities. A central task for adolescents is to understand who they are and develop a coherent sense of self (Erikson, 1968; Marcia, 1980). In addition, adolescents need to learn skills, knowledge, and mindsets that will help them grow into competent individuals and members of society. Research in developmental neuroscience shows that while the brain network in charge of emotional development abruptly becomes more assertive during adolescence, the brain network in charge of reasoning and cognitive control matures at a slower pace (Steinberg, 2007). This sometimes-volatile combination contributes to social-emotional distress (Rapee et al., 2019), interpersonal conflicts (Collins & Steinberg, 2006), and risk-taking (Steinberg, 2004).

Second Step® High School helps school leaders and classroom educators work with students to co-develop learning conditions that provide students with a positive school climate, adaptive experiences and mindsets, and skills and knowledge for navigating adolescence. It uses research-based approaches that support adolescents’ social-emotional development. Research indicates that for social-emotional learning programs for older students, strategies aimed at changing school climate and adolescents’ perceptions of themselves and their world via new experiences are generally more effective than direct skill instruction (Yeager, 2017). So Second Step High School combines all three of the following to promote effective adolescent social-emotional development.